


Angel in the crow's nest

by SunnyMae



Series: No good [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Becoming Reaper, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, If you read pt 1 uk im all about skipping around the timeline, M/M, No Moira, Past Relationship(s), Post Episode: Zurich, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes-centric, Time Skips, idk what meta actually means so we'll see, this might get meta
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-16 22:48:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14820386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunnyMae/pseuds/SunnyMae
Summary: He is a ghost of man, but still Gabriel Reyes. Ex-commander of Overwatch, ex-commander of Blackwatch, and ex-lover of Jack Morrison. Acclaimed, successful, and beloved. Red crosses over every title, yet he pays tribute to them like gravestones.-Gabriel Reyes becoming the Reaper. Pt. 1 recommended.





	1. It's Grit.

**1.1**

 

Gabriel is shorter than average, pigeon toed, and cute when he’s angry, and all to the chagrin of no one. He’s never held a gun that smokes and robot uprisings are still conspiracies. His world is quiet and years later, when he’ll need this, he’ll be too old to remember it.

Today, he rushes out of his front yard and the chain link fence gate is open. His hands are small and unscarred, the only imperfections are his bitten fingernails dark with dirt. They’re trembling as he reaches in front of him.

Gabriel is seven and for the first time, he learns dying oft is not silent. Life is raucous and angry and _desperate_ in its fight to be, and this is easier heard than seen. The scene of his dog crushed by a speeding car is further away than the shriek still ringing in his ears. It’s the sound that shoves him out of his yard tripping over his feet, to the red stain on the street.

Every death he’s seen has been on screen where bravado or dignity is not a privilege. Dying will come when the time is “right,” and for reasons much better than the gate was unlocked.

Gabriel is seven years old and his mother kneels to his level as he cries into her shoulder. She’s gently holding his wrists to his side, so he doesn’t wrap his gory arms around her. His flushed face buries itself in her black curls as her fingers combed through his. Gabriel sobs about how Ox is dead, how he forgot to lock the gate door. The dog only lived months instead of years, and Gabriel _killed_ him. His mother shushes him, because there’s no use grieving for a dumb dog diving into traffic.

( _With a tight collar, I could have saved him,_ something in him will say. And he will internalize it as children do. This memory will become hazy but never that mercury voice.)

She holds his hand when she brings him back inside and cleans him up. She has a frown but as soon as Gabriel tightens his grip, she smooths it into something softer.

 _“At least it was quick_ ,” she tells him as a reassurance. He will come to understand this platitude in forty-four years.

 

 

**1.2**

 

_“Papa? It’s my birthday next week and it’s gunna be a big party. I think Nunny got me a bouncy house, and she said you forget easy so I wanted to remind you. You gotta call asap ‘cause I wanna know, alright? Bye!”_

Beep.

“You’re a sadistic prick.”

“I thought you wanted to hear your son misses you, Caldwell.” Gabriel hits the playback button and lets it loop in the background. “It’s his birthday today, you know.”

“I do this for him.” Blood drips from the bound man’s hairline and past his swollen eye. The skintight manacles around his wrist shift with him as he forgets he can’t wipe it off. At least he’s sitting down, the past two days have been harsh. He can survive this one. It is his final day.

The clock is ticking, after all.

_“-so I wanted to remind you-”_

“I need a location, Caldwell, just the one.”

He turns the device around, it’s an old touchscreen tablet and its call application is open. His interrogator pushes it into the middle of the metal table before his hands are once again tapping on the auspicious button on the table. Never enough force to trigger it, even when Caldwell wished for it. The stillness of the room is a jarring change from the dungeon Reyes had kept him. There’s a cordiality radiating from the man he hadn’t seen before.

“I won’t let you go, not after that mess you made in Turkey, but I’m generous. I already have his number dialed on this.”

“Everything I do is for him.”

Reyes looks unimpressed.

“You will die in this cell. So, either you leave this earth fooling yourself into thinking he understands that, or you guarantee that he does.”

He doesn’t know when it is, but it’s soon. He can feel it. They must know too, by this desperate interrogation tactic. Almost good-cop-bad-cop but with only one man.

“- _it’s gunna be a big party-”_

“Words are worth more than wishes. Barter with me.”

“No.”

“Maybe I’ll find your little bastard and drag him here. Let’s see if he knows what Daddy’s been up to. Think he’ll last as long as you?”

Caldwell scoffs, "You don’t have the time.”

The dismissal causes Reyes to snatch the tablet back. He fusses with it, not breaking eye contact.

“You fucking idiot. You stupid son of a bitch. Are you telling me that if I could kill your whole fucking family right now, you’d squeal?”

He flips the tablet around, a still face that draws horror from Caldwell smiles back. The threat is fake, he inhales, Overwatch wouldn’t kill a child.

“How old is your kid? Renny Sandoval, he looks like he’s 11 in these pictures. Let me message my guy, see if he can connect me real time on this thing.”

“- _Papa? It’s my birthday next week-”_

He taps on the tablet and the voice message cuts out. He turns it back around. The same boy is sitting cross legged on a bench. He’s laughing, vanilla cake on the plate in front of him. The video is an awkward angle as it captures him from a rooftop. They can’t hear him, drowned out by the guests and telltale noises of a bouncy house.

“You’re a monster.”

“If that’s what it takes! Give me the fucking bomb location before you watch your darling eat a fucking bullet for your mistakes!”

The man looks excited, truly monstrous as he snarls. The wild look in his eyes is worse than the grin he had breaking Caldwell’s nose. Caldwell shifts his eyes away, for a second, and Gabe finally smiles. He presses the button on his earpiece.

“Wait for my signal.” A small red mark appears on the child’s head, unwavering and unnoticed. “Buddy, I hope you remember your own timer because if it goes off before we find it, that cakes going red velvet.”

“It’s heading for Alto Palermo!” He lunges in his seat. He’s yelling, careless because that’s his goddamn baby with a sniper trained on him. “Christ, fuck, get away from him, it’s in a blue hovervan, flower delivery! Please, god, don’t--”

Reyes hits the button on the desk, reeling the noose back and killing him.

“Fucking idiot.”

He hastily exits the solid lead cell and his transmitter beeps as it reconnects to the outside world. He relays the information to his Blackwatch pilot scouting over Argentina.

He hits the pause button on the tablet for a video taken hours before he went into the cell.

 

 

**1.3**

 

 

The second before their last suspends Gabriel like dust in the air. Their eyes are connected, and Gabriel can still convince himself that _this is a good way to die._

They’ve said their farewells. Jack’s too weak to be verbal, while Gabriel hasn’t practiced soft words in years. _Goodbye_ is on his tongue, but his final _I love you_ still tastes sweet on his mind. He chooses silence.

He wonders if this is how his own prisoners felt. When they were reminded of loved ones they would never see again, did it hurt them like this? When he threatened their lives, did it scare them like this? It was a simple tactic, one he approves of more now than ever.

But others, it composed them--summoned a wall of courage as they met their ends. Was their fear hidden by grit or was it conquered?

Either way, he sends a prayer for his estranged family scattered in California and to the man in his arms for this courage.

The countdown hits its critical, and it’s instant. Timing is impeccable, as to be expected from Sombra. The blasts surrounding the command room ruptures his ear drums, removing him into an outer body experience. The lights give way as the ceiling collapses in fractured tiles and Jack scrambles closer in his lap, no longer as serene as he had been during their final seconds.

He curls his body over Jack’s to protect him. He knows the answer to his earlier question. He does not curl because unknown strength surged through his body.

It’s grit, tough and unyielding, less a wall of courage and more like hooks that bind him to Jack. This is his and he is resolute to die with him, around him.

The floors must be collapsing because he feels them drop. Dark and muffled, like he’s hit the bottom surface of river. What he can distinctly hear, more so feel is a swan song reverberating through his core. He would assume it came from Jack, so close but still too far, but it must be him. Jack could be yelling, but it can’t compete with the chaos around them. The scream layered on top of the rumbling is tight in his ear and encapsulating him even more thoroughly than the scorching heat. The sound, barely piercing through, reminds him of a dog he had long forgotten.

Something smashes against his head and it’s quiet

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SUPER NERVOUS ABOUT THIS. I have fragments of this story that have been sitting around for over a year and I'm posting chapter one because I keep going back and obsessing over it instead of writing new parts. Christ this is short. Looking back on it now, I do want to rewrite that whole part one of series, but that'll be like the end of this journey.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at riza-k (main) or sunnytilmae (sideblog)
> 
> title from the song No Good Al Joad by Hop Along


	2. It's Desperate

-for a split second.

 

**2.4**

 

 

Silence is after the fact. Sometimes it’s more frightening than the event itself. To be suffocated in noise and then suddenly, surrounded by nothing is a deep end dive into cold waters.

Gabriel is twenty-two years old and he hears _dying_ a dozen times in stacked successions. He hears it in the steady fire of Omnic units, and in the assassination of his squad. It’s before he’s recommended for the SEP, and before humanity created weapons capable of tearing living steal apart. Instead he’s in the Marines on his first tour. The war in North Korea has flipped against their favor with the introduction of new robots in the battlefield. Well, not necessarily new. They stand at 6 feet tall and the tacky paint hadn’t been completely stripped off. Gabriel can imagine them slotted in booths, cooking foods at inhuman speeds.

The guns are new. Their movement patterns are new.

In high school, they discussed AI often. Overnight, their introduction destroyed industries and replaced the working class, but the single advantage every educator would mention was their involvement in the military.

Sending in bots instead of people into otherwise fatal situation prevented needless injuries or death, technology increased accuracy, so every bullet meant much more. Robots reduced casualties, droid advocators would say. He disagrees.

The entire area is jammed, and he knows this because of the sudden silence in his radio and their drones have dropped from the sky. The red lights across their heads blink as they try to reconnect to a signal.

He feels the dead air in his gut, and his instructions to pull back can’t come out fast enough.

In a minute, he is pressed into the grass, wet with last night’s rain, while his heart beats out of his chest and into his Kevlar vest. He’s laid out on his front and regret weighs down on him in a literal fashion.

It’s Kelsey. Kelsey had stumbled over from the force of the bullets that, through quantity, pierced his thick chest armor. His large stature grabbed at Gabriel for support, but instead tumbled them both over. Gabriel struggles to crawl out from under the marine, his friend, who coughs twice before never moving again, and he realizes there are trooper units on them. At least three, but his positioning makes it impossible to tell.

These North Korean trooper units are patrolling in a V formation and Gabriel can’t understand why the jammers aren’t affecting them. Instead they stop disjointedly when their perceived leader halts and screeches. It locks its beady eyes with theirs individually, eyes flashing and grills beeping. They’re communicating, he realizes.

He waits several minutes after the Omnics signal to one another and leave before he rolls Kelsey off him. They left noisily, flat feet stuttering through the muddy ground, and they must have waiting stock still to ambush his team.

In his nightmares, he lays face up, staring into Kelsey’s unblinking eyes. He smells his team’s gore, their gunpowder, and the wild grass. He’s frozen with sleep paralysis, waiting for the Omnic units’ departure.

It's so quiet. He never hears them leave.

 

 

**2.3**

 

 

“That could have gone better. Are you alright?” Jack asks as they sit in the small plane.

And he answers yes, out of habit. A small bit out of fear. And Jack hums low, tilting it to voice his suspicions and he stares at Gabriel for an uncomfortable amount of time. Though any amount of time is uncomfortable now that he realizes why his heart jumps to his throat when Jack gets too comfortable around him.

"That’s a damn lie but if you say so.”

He feels the discomfort in his dismissive _I’m fine, Jack_ but to stare at the darkening sky through the window. He keeps his focus on the clouds, even as Jack rolls his eyes in the window reflection.

There isn’t enough room to comfortably fit three regular humans in their seats, buckling slightly to two super soldiers. They’re practically sharing a loveseat with an armrest dividing them. Jack shifts and his arm hair pulls sharp against his own.

It would be easy to move closer. He could put his hand on the other man’s knee and confess how scared he was. And Jack would smile that obnoxiously reassuring smile and remind him they made it out alright.

And then Gabriel would follow him to the ends of the earth for a hint of that smile.

There is no love in war. There is no give and take. There is only sacrifice, and Jack only understands that in himself, as if he could give a tenth of himself and make a full ten for others.

Gabriel can’t afford that distraction. He needs to stay cold, emotionless, decisive. He needs to be uninhibited in the coming battles because if he were any less, they wouldn’t be cozy in their plane. Maybe everything did turn out okay, when Gabriel managed to save their civilian group with a classic action movie move, closing off their trail with an avalanche of debris that prevented the Omnics from following.

But there was a moment's hesitation. A moment where he considered letting those tin cans follow them in and test if their one pulse gun could protect everyone.

Jack had grappled his way to a cave in the cliffs. He’d wedged their emergency oxygen tanks between the rocks and Gabriel would shoot it. And Gabriel knew all the ways it could go wrong. Jack would run to safety, but the cliff could easily fall onto him as well. If he was too slow, which is laughable after what SEP did to him, he could be caught in the explosion.

So, he considered not shooting it at all.

But Jack gave the signal over the comms, and Gabriel shot the target, and Jack came flying from where he was climbing, suffering burns and a dislocated knee, but alive nonetheless.

No amount of assurances will rid him of that moment, watching Jack become engulfed in the white smoke before being thrown out of it, tumbling wildly in the air. There was a half second where Gabriel thought he killed him. And in that moment, he thought it wasn’t worth it.

And the idea of living in that second for the rest of his short life, was enough for Gabriel to say nothing in a plane hundreds of miles from their escape, and hours closer to their next mission.

 

**2.2**

 

School is hard. Everyone says that, and everyone means it, but nobody says it in a way that Gabriel understands until he’s in high school, balancing every goddamn hour like a working mother of three.

Do good, do better, until he’s collected enough credits to cut two years off his college career. He’s in track and journalism and drama and studying on any free second. He hasn’t heard from a single scholarship program, and only his safe school has responded to his application.

In a year, he’ll be six feet under overpriced books for a major he hasn’t decided on. He selects mechanical engineering on their online application form, but he keeps scrolling through their drama department. He’s not for the spotlight, but he’d love to continue doing set design.

“Do the things you love!” his drama head says, spinning in a circle.

Maybe, maybe, but he shouldn’t. It’s about job security, his father would say. It’s about the starting salary, his mother says.

He has sketchbooks in his locker full of designs he says he’ll finish when he has time. They’re not good, not yet, but he figures he’ll learn when he’s older and less busy. It’s the closest thing to his “passion” but he keeps it on the back burner because of life is compromise.

During lunch, he keeps his laptop on the cafeteria table and his lunch in his lap.  It’s a one-hour period where he tries to cram material for two online classes.

“Hey, Gab-o, you going to the football game on Friday?”

He shrugs.

And the girl nods because they’re friends but not good friends. They’ll catch each other if their shared Literature teacher plans a group project but Gabriel barely knows her apart from most of his classmates. He only knows she’s funny and nice, and he doesn’t bother trying to learn anything deeper.

“Maybe next week, Morganstein’s project is killing me.”

“I think you mean Morganstein’s monster,” and he smiles at that. Funny and nice. “Maybe the next one?”

He nods.

In AP Physics, he sits next to his class valedictorian and listens to her ramble about an internship she’s booked on for the summer. He nods along with her friend, but he doesn’t engage. He has nothing to compare.

He doesn’t know how to climb to her level. Maybe he should have gotten an internship too. He should have gotten a job last year, he should have volunteered more, found ways to smooze with career professionals and become a working member of society.

Class begins. The pop test kicks their ass and the teacher snorts from their dramatic groans.  He drags a red stylus across the holo-board where their answers are displayed.

“If you think this is hard, you’re all going to miss me when you’re in college.”

During track, his ex-boyfriend talks about going to winter formal stag. Asks if he’s going. There’s a heavy tone of suggestion and Gabriel doesn’t want to say yes. He can’t go, it’s right after midterms and he doesn’t want to disappoint Julio when he comes in with a suit he grabbed from the outlet mall last second. So, he apologizes and shuts his locker and escapes outside.

Maybe he should have taken high school easier. Relaxed and got himself actual friends. Fell in love and gotten his heartbroken, made mistakes beyond forgetting a deadline, so that maybe this school shit wouldn’t seem so bad.

“These are the best years of your life, don’t waste ‘em,” his coach says when she sees a few kids running in late.

He’s spent it fighting academic success and he’s not even top 5 percentile. He’s not even hitting up a In-N-Out with a tight knit group of friends after practice. The past four years of his life is a blur of passing and failing tests, of mindlessly chatting to people he never talked to again, and of trying to figure out what’s exactly he’s doing.

And as he runs laps, not even at impressive speeds, he sees the trail of mediocrity he’s left behind him.

Everyone talks about freedom after this, but isn’t it just two or three more years of the same drivel? And then a bachelor’s degree, which nearly everyone has, so there’s a master’s degree to be considered.

His breaths come out quicker, visible mist in the November air.

He can’t do this again.

The woman is young, maybe in her mid-twenties. She looks happy, shaking teenagers’ hands and showing them pamphlets. She’s in a navy-blue uniform, decorated by a couple of medals on her left breast.

One day, he talks to a military recruiter posted outside their cafeteria instead of eating lunch. He won’t know what to say to his mother when he comes home tonight. Maybe nothing, until he gets shipped out to boot camp. But when she turns to him, he offers an unsure smile.

“I’m thinking about enlisting.”

 

 

**2.1**

 

 

He hears it, everything, at full volume as he had only existed in a bubble until now. It’s a screech, more metallic than man, but It is undeniably his as it pierces the air around him and back through him. It’s unnatural in its consuming nature, an ouroboros of alarm. It’s no longer dark, his eyes lit with red instead. Pain has a vice grip on him and that is the totality of his world.

Nothing else.

There are no indications of fires or the HQ building falling into itself. Gabriel can’t even tell where his limbs are. Instead he’s drowning in a sea of glass shards, not thrashing but rag dolled through it in God’s hand. His screeches barely fluctuate, permanent and unflinching.

The pain is indescribable, levels above anything he’s faced in his overdrawn life. He could restock an armory with the bullets that have pierced his skin, and only now he is beyond his limits.

His shrieks mean nothing, propelling themselves out without his consent. It’s harsh and wordless, but Gabriel understands desperation like a language. He’s learned it in his career, in the field, in his dungeons, practically a native to its intricacies. He knows what he sounds like, hears it like a translator at their ready.

 

 

 _“LET ME DIE!”_  


 

 

Time does not exist in this hell so the moment between now and then is as eternal as it is fleeting.

  


Darkness surrounds him abruptly, tinted in gold, soft and comforting—striking him like lightning in its juxtaposition with his prior environment. It numbs him into a coldness. His mind fogs with tiredness instead of pain, and it becomes harder to remember that hell he encountered. His body welcomes the blackness.

He drifts further away, farther from his own mind. The questions it asks are distant. Where is he? Did he die? It repeats like cricketing in a starry night.

Finally, a voice louder than the rest asks, “Where’s Jack?”

He falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey my name's gabriel reyes and im a mess.
> 
> Ahh!! It progresses!!!!


End file.
